Edited by

Sarah Dowling

Amy De'Ath

Poems by Holly Pester

My speech-based compositions mostly exist through performance and audio works. Every text is written to an aural/audio shape, picking up themes of linguistic algorithms and error, everyday speech and humor. Lately, I’ve been interested in noise and interference in sound media and the parasitic quality of sound poetry. Other than that, pulsars, scrimshaw, sea shanties, and space travel.

On one hand I see my work as tragically British — born out of British surreal comedy and performance, artful failure, nonsense rhyme, and folk verse. On the other hand the formal aspects of my work and my approach to poetic practice are an utter tribute to North American influences. I should start with Peter Jaeger, with a direct hand on my practice (is this cheating?) as my tutor, but also as a model for how-to poetry. His direction and work outlined a “sky’s the limit” approach to conceptualizing and composing a text, with such enthusiasm for experimentation, filtering K. Goldsmith’s “uncreative writing” into my work, bpNichol, and Steve McCaffery, and all Canadian Sound Poetry. My work particularly grew through engaging with McCaffery’s work and wonderful critical writing on sound poetry as a dimension of literature, and poetry as a performance event. I also have a lot of respect for the sci-fi exploits of Christian Bök. On a more intuitive level I have been long drawn to Hannah Weiner’s edgy, willful, experimental texts. And I felt, once I’d found it (!) that I’d been following the thread of Code Poems for a long time in my thinking. And I’d add Susan Howe, and her inspirational model for playing the deviant in the archive.

Process: the speech was taken from online minidocumentaries about the role HAM radio operators played during the Hurricane Katrina crisis in New Orleans. HAM radios are amateur, licensed radio network operators. During the storm all official emergency communication networks failed and only HAM radios were operational. This left large groups of essentially volunteer radio operators fielding and assisting distress calls. The documentaries featured extracted recordings of conversations between people trapped in flooded areas and HAMs in outposts around Louisiana.

The texts were composed by listening to the audio of the documentaries (with headphones) and reciting the heard speech into a voice recorder. The text was then transcribed from the recording of my recital. The following script is a file compression. It begins with the sound of the wind.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBroger roger eye ball reflector i’ve already put that out ok i’ll tell raydo you have any other radios or helicopters? okone of the things you can do is talk through me w5julietbravopapa i’ll make sure the proper people get itsure as hell i will I’llsee if i can get some help for youright nowso y’all knowwe’ve got about 250 hams in Louisianathey’re well organised they’re doing a good job butthey can’t do it forever thebiggest problem is Mississippi at the momentthere’s a lot of transport and traveland there’s no place to stay sothat’s the other problem we have andi’ll be working on that tonight tomorrow tonight butwe’re doing everything we can you guys are doing a great jobRoger i understandwe’ve got another call for you okearlier today we had a problem Louisiana state Charlie Charlie 2 alpha oh hellhis name’s David they were in that area and i believe they’ve got a list ofnames of people that are ready to go as soon as they can gook i just wait for a phone callyeah is anyone else going out that wayok does anybody else need meok i’ve got a quick quick questiongo aheadmy name’s Brucei’m getting some calls from some folks picking something up from wtzx a ham radioit’s listed as running traffici’ve just got home from workhas anyone heard about that todayarraawaaawaawaawaa i don’t know the detail i couldn’t get the timei had no problem the only information said, call this radio stationthis is papathere’s something going on idon’t know what kind of call that iscan you give me some names some informationmy name is Douglasi’m at the hospital in Mississippiok Douglas go ahead i can help youok you can get the equipment back up and ruiningklm overok Douglas let me rebroadcast just in case anybody does anybody listening from the administration hospitalanyone hear that call in the last hour or so Douglas i’m not getting a response sowe will pay attention to that i suggest you hang around for a little whilewe’ll see if we can pick them up copy that3.935 they’re going to be a bit disturbed when they hear you buti’ll keep up the good workthis is klm494 this w5393 check back and forth between the two frequencies okstand by there’s a query the party was looking for information on roads is it possible for any assistance to getincos this family want to bring food and clothing to this family that is in that area do you have any idea i have no idea but i imagine if they’re coming in from the westthey’re evacuating to Huston so that is escapeok i’ll give her a call i’ll try state police i cant find anything at allecho echothis is w5julietbravo papathis is risky5 calling in Louisianawe’re taking some messages down here at the lake crossingthey’re a little bit hardi understand you’ve got yourself a site full of arms haven’t youi’m telling you there’s tornados everywhereand i see three trees three trees smashing tweed daddy’s barbecuei’ve got some messageswe’ve tried to set up some communication with the locals who have no traffic and needles to sayany infrastructureall the power lines, everything is downwe went to the eye wall and it was stucki can imagine welli can’t guess what they’re gonna do until sundownmove from 35 i don’t know about hw traffic actually i have three pieces of traffic here i don’t know what you’re going to do with them i roger that wellthe frequency that these messages are on all around the countryare just frantic and everything and pretty stressed outand they’re justwhat we’re gonna do is we’re gonna post messages in and out right here andhopefully the communication will try and slide downtomorrowwe will try and get down to 3935 tonightbuild some antenna systemswe’ll just tryget on this frequency40 metres and at least try and get some of these messages outi’ve got traffic is that what you’ve gotVictor Victor

Directions: Inhale on the text with arrows as a breath, not a word. Double arrows are for longer intake of breath, single arrow is for sharp intake. Exhale on none arrowed type while speaking as word. Bullet denotes new news item.

Sarah Dowling and Amy De'Ath have curated this feature devoted to the influence of North American poetry and poetics on English poetry, with work by Tim Atkins, Jeff Hilson, Richard Parker, Holly Pester, Sophie Robinson, and Carol Watts that offers a range of perspectives on the intersections of Anglophone poetries.